Tag Archives: pizza

We talk a lot about pizza around these parts, but can you blame us? Pizza is just about the perfect, when done right. But, as you no doubt know, it’s…not always done right. Now we get a lot of flack from St. Louis and Ohio Valley residents because of our article that (correctly) points out what their regional pizzas are (garbage) but we can at least take solace in knowing that, as a nation, we generally have our shit together. Other countries, though? Not so much. Sure, we’ve previously talked about Pizza Hut’s crazy international menu items, and England’s hot dog crust pizza, but we’ve not really taken the moment to sit down and let you know how badly other countries are screwing up pizza.

And boy howdy, are they screwing up pizzas.

Granted, this article only lists isolated instances—a bad pizza idea from a country other than America does not mean that the country in question does not know how to make at least passable pizza otherwise. But still, when we see pizzas being ruined across the world, it’s our duty, as Americans, to point it out. You know, so we can feel superior, and also so we can say, “Well, sure, we have St. Louis-style pizza, but we’re not monsters.”

Pumpkin Spice Latte is a combination of words that usually can be seen in conjunction with phrases like, “Those damn Millennials” and, “Got no respect for their elders.” We’re not going to talk about Pumpkin Spice Lattes being good, bad, or appearing on menus earlier and earlier each year because you’ve all read a dozen of mouth-breathing articles on that topic already. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are, at the end of the day, one of those things that a lot of people get mad about when they really shouldn’t. Like, some people like to drink coffee that has cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and allspice in it during the Fall, why…why should we care one way or the other? Like, we’re seriously asking here, did your family get killed in a cinnamon farming accident, or are you just knee-jerk reacting to some trend that’s popular among people who are younger than you?

Anyway, the point being, we’re not here to shit on you if you enjoy yourself a nice PSL from time to time. You do you. But even if the days of the Pumpkin Spice Latte are waning, and the PSL will soon to join Uggs as retired totems of basicness, companies are still trying to wring each little ounce of profit out of the PSL craze, which, unfortunately, has given us a lot of pumpkin spice products that should never exist.

So while we support you and your right to a Pumpkin Spice Latte on a nice fall day, we do not support these products, which take pumpkin spice to terrifying, gross places.

“The fact that we go to such lengths to deliver pizza should really make you pissed off that the nearest location to you doesn’t do delivery.”

~Pizza Hut Marketing Execs

Pizza Hut is that pizza chain that you really like, think is really overrated, or have never gotten because half of their locations don’t do delivery and actually sitting down inside a Pizza Hut to eat their pizza kind of feels like giving up on life. We’ve talked about it in these hallowed halls, usually in reference to the weird shit they do overseas (or, frankly, within our borders).

But no matter your opinion on how they do pizza, one thing we can all agree on is that they do marketing with…let’s say, a lot of spunk. They work hard to peddle their stuffed crusts and cheesy breads and…wings, we guess. Who actually orders wings from Pizza Hut? We digress. The point being, Pizza Hut loves their publicity stunts. Especially when it comes to finding wacky, crazy ways to delivery you pizza, Pizza Hut is in a class of their own. We’re not sure if that’s a good thing.

~The Average American’s First Response to Hearing of the Existence of Pizza Puffs

America is a pretty big country, all things considered, and we’re not just talking about geographically. Different areas have noticeably different cultures—you could probably find more differences between a small town in Texas and a co-op in Portland than you’d find between separate European nations that don’t even speak the same language. This size and diversity makes road trips awesome, while also ensuring that no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to find and taste every single delicious local food concoction. Think about it—there is, right now, some awesome, underground food invention in your very hometown or city that you haven’t even heard of yet. Now just imagine that on a nationwide scale. Every city in America has a type of food that is unique to them, and the only thing that takes away from the joy we find in that knowledge is the fact that most of America goes their lives not knowing that their new favorite food is out there somewhere.

We bring this up because we’re going to tell you about one of those local treats—the pizza puff. Made in Chicago, but really only known to the Chicagoans who often frequent run down hot dog stands (so, you know, pretty much every Chicagoan) there’s not much history surrounding it, apart from the fact that it’s absurdly delicious, recklessly unhealthy, and, well, it’s basically like a deep fried pizza pocket, and if that doesn’t sound appealing to you, close this browser, turn off your computer, and drown yourself in a river, because you’re doing life wrong.

For those of you still dry and alive, however, let’s talk about pizza puffs.

Around these parts, our staff has a potentially unhealthy infatuation with combining two of the most American forms of consumption—eating and drinking—into inventive ways to get drunk without even having to drink anything. Why do we want to take drinking out of the equation? We don’t, drinking is wonderful, but we feel that there’s no such thing as too many ways to cram alcohol into your poor decisions, which is why we’re always around to champion such innovations as deep fried alcohol, and also why we’re going to try to be the first people to get hospitalized by eating that new powdered alcohol stuff straight from the box, just the powder.

Now, we’ve previously talked about food being used to make alcohol—specifically, meat beers that are brewed with actual animal meat, because ha ha vegetarians your lifestyle is one that our evolution has actively discouraged. Now it’s only fitting to go the other direction, and talk about alcohol being used to make food. All of these meals and desserts exist in America for your consumption, created by heroes who looked at a dinner plate and thought, “You know what? Let’s get drunk off that, no matter how weird of an idea it might seem.”

Americans either love or hate exercising. Sure, you can find some middle ground of, people that guess they should go for a jog today, but generally speaking, you have two camps of American exercisers—the kind of person that gets really into their workout journal, and the kind of person who actively brags that they go out of the way to limit their day to day physical exertions as much as possible. The stereotypes are in place—you have the cross-fit trainer on a Paleo diet, or you have the overweight American chugging a beer while eating a ChipoHut Taco (that’s where you take a Chipotle burrito, put it inside a full Pizza Hut pizza, and fold the whole thing into a massive taco).

Naturally, the latter is the more American option. However, in the past few years, people who “exercise” and “take care of their bodies” and “can go up a flight of stairs without running out of breath” have seemingly taken a hard look at themselves and said, “Yes, I should still exercise, but maybe I can find a way to do it while also being a little unhealthy, which sounds a lot more fun.”

We’ve coined a term for this kind of slightly unhealthy, exponentially more fun exercise—the Jog N’ Vom. Basically, dozens of races have sprung up across America that don’t want you to just run an arbitrary distance while they time you—they want you to incorporate drinking or eating something super unhealthy into your run, turning your 5K into an eating or drinking competition, which is a wonderful thing.

So, for you health nuts out there that still want to be the best American you can be, we present with you a (fairly) comprehensive list of the races that let you be bad while being good.

When you were a child, you’d look up at the stars and say, “Space is awesome!” Now, when you look up at the stars, you’ll either say, “Space is fucking awesome!” or, most likely, “Make everything stop spinning, oh God I’m gonna be sick, I shouldn’t have had that last shot.” And America, being awesome and having a particular interest in claiming awesome things for themselves, have never been shy about our aspirations to get out into the stars. Adjusted for inflation, we’ve spent roughly $790 billion since NASA opened up shop in 1958, an amount of money commonly referred to as, “Shut up, stupid, that’s not too much money, space is awesome.”

From Alan Shepard’s first suborbital flight to Sandra Bullock’s conversation with an Inuit, Americans have done more in space than any other nation. And while experiments, and feats of courage, and lunar travels are all well and good, there’s one thing we’re most concerned about.

What kinds of food have we shot out into space?

Dammit, this is important. No, we don’t care about your science, we want to know what kind of food people have shot up into space. This is important. Shut up, this is important.

Before we get started, let’s take a deep breath and look at that screenshot. Just, really soak it in. Let it wash over you like a cool stream. This is a thing that exists, that happened in real life, that is currently happening in real life. Don’t let yourself forget that.

For a website that dedicates itself to the Americanness of being American, we sure do seem to talk about Japan a lot. You might wonder, “Why? Why are there more articles about Japanese Doritos on this site than ones about Ben Franklin?” Well, for starters, if you ever tried to write about Ben Franklin’s life, you immediately would come down with a severe case of 18th century syphilis, and we’ve yet to find a writer to volunteer for that (though, come to think of it, we might have a perfect candidate). But secondly, Japan takes American ideals but then warps them in fascinating, terrifying ways, and we hope that maybe, just maybe, by showing them the craziness of their ways they might take things down a notch and start embracing a more normally (read as, “less tentacles”) American way of life.

You’re right. It’s futile. They’re too far gone to be saved. Just look at how they do pizza chains.

Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong: The Pizza Little Party Pizzeria

“Pizza is a lot like sex. When it’s good, it’s really good. When it’s bad? It’s still pretty good. And when it’s God awful, you find you can’t stop screaming, and it takes years for the nightmares to finally stop.”

~You

Yesterday, we showed you the five best regional pizza styles in America, with a hidden agenda of angering New Yorkers. Today, we’re looking at the dark underbelly of pizza. Because, as great as America is at making pizza, not everyone can get it right. Hell, Brazil makes and eats 1.4 million pizzas every day, but even with all that practice they still do shit like put chocolate on it. So as great as pizza is, it’s not always a winner. The best pizzas? Are glorious.